Juventus President Tells Players to Earn Their Pay
Copyright � 1999 Nando Media
Copyright � 1999 Agence France-Presse
MILAN, Italy (September 28, 1999 10:13 a.m. EDT http://www.sportserver.com)
- Juventus president Vittorio Chiusano cancelled all team leave and ordered his players to start earning their salaries.
Chiusano's outburst follows Juventus' humiliating 2-0 defeat at the hands of newly-promoted Lecce over the weekend.
"Juventus were like the well-prepared college student who sits down to take an exam and whose mind suddenly goes completely blank," said Chiusano.
"But in the end, they still have to get their degree -- and our players are paid to graduate!
"We made fools of ourselves at Lecce. It mustn't happen again," he added.
Equally upset is coach Carlo Ancelotti.
"We've been flying too high. Obviously, you have to accept that eventually you're going to lose, you can't expect to finish the season unbeaten.
"But what disappointed me was the fact that Juventus, at Lecce, simply didn't play football. It's something that can happen, but it mustn't happen again. The team didn't have the right amount of tension," he complained.
"They don't need to have a gun at their backs, but they do need to have the right level of motivation to deliver the kind of perfomances we need."
The team are clearly handicapped by the absence of combative Dutch midfielder Edgar Davids and the fact that Alessandro Del Piero still hasn't hit form yet on his return from surgery.
Ancelotti said: "I don't need statistics to tell me how important Davids is, and as for Del Piero, unlike Ronaldo, he's someone who needs to play regularly -- even if it means playing badly -- to recover his form."
He insisted the team had been strengthened by the club's moves on the transfer market, and that there was no point being nostalgic for those who had left like goalkeeper Angelo Peruzzi, who saved a penalty for Inter Milan at the weekend, or midfielder Angelo Di Livio, now at Fiorentina.
"This a new group, the team has been rejuvenated," Ancelotti said. "We've made progress, but not enough... and this is not the time for regrets.
"Our problem at the moment is continuity and you can only solve that by hard work, and not by groping around in the dark."
The call to arms came after Juventus fans daubed insults at the team's Comunale stadium training ground in Turin.
The coach was one of the targets ("Ancelotti pig") while the three men who run the club -- Antonio Giraudo, Luciano Moggi and Roberto Bettega -- faced calls to be sacked by its owner Giovanni Agnelli.
Last May, angry Juventus fans vented their anger at the dismal end to the season by trashing the Comunale's press room.
